I’m in my favourite phase of writing at the moment; when a whole slew of ideas and half-baked notions about a story, start to coalesce and make sense.

I’m aiming for this short story competition, which is still open, so I won’t give away ALL my plot; but I just love the idea of a local magic, with the edge of steampunk.

Every time I’ve sat down with nothing to do recently – in a restaurant, in a church, in the garden – out has come my notebook; and ideas have poured into it. I now have protagonist, antagonist, mission, conflict, premise, and setting. I woke up this morning realising that the story had to be set in the Abbey at Bury St Edmunds, when King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta.

This turns out to be the crucial issue:

“the wardship of the land, shall keep up the houses, parks, fishponds, stanks, mills, and other things pertaining to the land, out of the issues of the same land”

I’m not quite ready to start writing; the name and face of my protagonist hasn’t appeared yet, and I still need to find the right binary explosive – but the story is coming along!